books.google.com - In "Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World," David Rieff looks at a city that was long the epitome of the American Dream and is now, for many, the emblem of the American urban nightmare. Writing before the riots of 1992, Rieff found not a city of dreams but a city of bitter contradictions. A city that,...https://books.google.com/books/about/Los_Angeles.html?id=zSwZAQAAMAAJ&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareLos Angeles

Los Angeles: capital of the Third World

In "Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World," David Rieff looks at a city that was long the epitome of the American Dream and is now, for many, the emblem of the American urban nightmare. Writing before the riots of 1992, Rieff found not a city of dreams but a city of bitter contradictions. A city that, like the United States itself, was being transformed by immigrants and refugees from Latin America and East Asia from an extension of Europe to a diverse patchwork of the peoples of the world. This is an L.A. that has never been described before, "a brilliant and disturbing examination," as Joan Didion called it, "of the America we have not yet faced."

About the author (1991)

David Rieff

David Rieff is a contributing writer to "The New York Times Magazine." He is the author of seven previous books, including the acclaimed "At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention; A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis;" and "Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West." He lives in New York City.